Alicia Keys on love, dealing with fame – and Rihanna

I meet Alicia Keys in June, after she steps off Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena stage, another rapturously applauded date completed on her Set the World on Fire world tour. The 33-year-old singer has performed in more than 20 cities since then – from Cologne and Zurich to Istanbul and Buenos Aires – and will be in Dubai on Friday for a concert that will also feature the American R&B singer Jason Derulo.

After the show in Nottingham, the tour bus engine idles while Team Keys assembles hot drinks – a fragrant concoction for the workaholic star of the show, who is swaddled in a jersey and scarf. “Mmm, it’s good,” she shouts, drumming her hands on the table in delight. “It has ghee, cardamom, turmeric, all these yummy Indian spices,” she explains. “And a little bit of almond milk. It’s delicious. It’s supposed to be relaxing. And it does help everything – skin, throat ...”

In the upstairs lounge of the sleek coach, Keys peeks through the curtains as we start to move. “I love you guys, I’m sorry I couldn’t hang out,’ she murmurs to the fans waiting outside. “It sucks,” she sighs. “It’s all rainy, too. So,” she says, turning her attention and her mega-watt smile to me, “I’m so excited to talk to you because you’ve officially known me for so long, that I actually wanna interview you. When was the first time you met me?”

Our first interview, in 2003, was conducted at night in a car while driving from London to Brighton for a Radio 1 event. She was only 22, but already rocket-propelled by album sales of around 10 million. As her manager said at the time, she’d had “seven figures in the bank since she was 14”, the age at which she signed her first million-dollar record deal; but she wasn’t nearly as regal as she might have been, perhaps because of her upbringing. An only child, Alicia Augello Cook was raised by her single-parent mum.

That journey to Brighton was a surreal set-up, made more so by the fact that her writing partner, Kerry “Krucial” Brothers, was driving. When I asked her to confirm what I’d heard from someone at her record label, that Brothers was also her boyfriend, her glare would have shamed Medusa.

“Who said we were dating?” Keys retorted sharply, before pulling down the shutters on any further questions.

She maintained that emotional omertà for the next decade. Our interviews were characterised by my trying to pin her down on basic personal details – was Brothers her boyfriend? If not, was she dating someone else? – and her deploying smiley platitudes and her formidable intellect to wriggle away every time. She might have been a global superstar, but Keys remained fundamentally unknown. Highly talented as an artist, for sure, but businesslike, remote and curiously two-dimensional as a person.

Keys has come a long way since then: she has sold 30 million albums and won several Grammys, and counts among her friends Barack and Michelle Obama, their connection forged by a shared interest in philanthropy, notably in the area of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In 2006, when she was playing a show at the Great Wall of China, I was introduced to her mum, Terri Augello, a paralegal and occasional actress.

“How’s your mum?” I ask her now.

“She’s cool. She’s able to focus on her acting, which is her passion. I didn’t keep her on the road for very long. Basically, what happened was, we were arriving at some city at some awful time of night. And everybody has to get off the bus to go to the hotel and she fell out of her bunk and she was on her hands and knees and I was like: ‘That’s it, you can’t be here anymore. You gotta just be my mum, ’cause this is breaking my heart.’ This,” Keys nods coolly, reflecting on a dozen years of international jet-setting and gig-hopping, “is such a hard road, man.”

From such personal questions, the old Keys would have run a million miles “in the other direction”, she chips in with a laugh. “That’s true. I am way more relaxed,” she admits. “Life is many things and I didn’t know how to balance it before. And I didn’t know how to enjoy it very much, either. One of the things my husband has taught me is how to be more free. To be more fluid and flow.’

Keys has changed. A lot. The shutters have lifted with age and by her finding personal happiness – she married the writer and producer Swizz Beatz (real name Kasseem Dean, 34) in 2010, and their son Egypt was born the same year. The toddler even appears on Girl on Fire, her fifth album, speaking on the track When It’s All Over.

Like his wife, Swizz has been in the music industry since he was a teenager, producing his first track at 16. Kanye West once called him “the best rap producer of all time”. He most recently co-produced (with Timbaland) Jay Z’s Open Letter, between designing a trainer line with Reebok and adding to his art collection (with a Basquiat).

Keys might be one-third of an A-list American diva triumvirate alongside Beyoncé and Rihanna, all of whom played in London in the summer, yet, whereas those superstars deploy pyrotechnics, callisthenic dance routines and dizzying costume changes, her performance is more low-key: she changes piano more than she changes costume.

Has she considered beefing up her show to compete with her peers?

“I think always our thing is that I am who I am … It’s gonna be an emotional connection,” she answers.

Keys acknowledges that “Jay and B” are “good friends” of hers and Swizz, as are Bono and his wife Ali Hewson (who shares Keys’ passion for projects in Africa).

“And Emeli Sandé is a friend,” she adds of the Scottish star with whom she’s written songs for both artists’ albums.

Does she like Rihanna?

She answers that she loves her “style” and her boldness, and the fact that she is “no pun intended, so -unapologetic”.

“But also, it’s such a tricky, crazy business,” she says. “When people are a little bit younger than me, I’m always hoping that their soul is good ’cause it can be such a soulless space. Who’s really loving you and making sure that you’re OK? Because everybody wants to make sure you’re OK when they can get something from you and they’re getting a percentage from you. But they don’t technically care if you’re OK. They just wanna make sure you can stand so you can go to work. So naturally I am always thinking about people and hoping that in this very soulless place they can find completion.”

Does she think Rihanna has people around her who will help her complete herself?

“Um. I don’t know, because I don’t know her personally like that. But I do know there are a lot of good people at Roc Nation [her management company]. And I do think that as we all get older, you start to be able to say: ‘No, I’m not gonna take that from you any more.’ So, I’m proud of Rihanna. Because it’s not easy to stand up in this crazy world and make it and keep going and try new things. And find your way through it.”

Of course, of all single-minded people, Keys knows there would be no telling Rihanna what to do. But there is one member of her inner circle she’ll happily advise. He might not yet be 3, but in little over a decade, Egypt will be the same age his mum was when she started touting her musical wares to record companies.

“Gaaagh,” she shrieks when I point this out.

Would she encourage him to do as she did?

“Well, he has crazy rhythm. So, yeah, man,” she admits. “But he has to do what makes him happy. And if it makes him light up, yeah, I want him to do it.”

Looks like Beyoncé and Jay Z’s daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, will have some stiff competition.

* London Evening Standard / The Interview People

• Alicia Keys brings her Set the World on Fire tour to Dubai Media City Amphitheatre on Friday. Tickets cost from Dh295